Coming up on Timeline, growing numbers of homeless teens see help on the horizon.
Doctors get a helping hand in the operating room as robotic technology meets surgical
science and a look into the underground culture of B-boys.
Those stories and more, right now on Timeline.
Hello, and welcome to Timeline.
I'm Nicholas Kurtz.
And I'm Jennifer Brofer.
For the next hour, we'll be featuring stories about what's going on in Central New York.
The people you're about to meet have a variety of interests, from education and the environment,
to baseball and even breakdancing.
But our first story deals with a subject that perhaps many of us would prefer to ignore,
homelessness.
But ignoring it won't change the fact that the problem is getting worse in America, especially
among teenagers.
There are close to 3 million homeless youth in the United States, and every year, 5,000
of them die from illness, assault or suicide.
Central New York is not immune to the problem.
Jose Cologne explains how people here are trying to find ways to reach out to these troubled
teens.
Would you know if someone was homeless if you passed by him or her on the streets?
Sometimes there's no question.
A simple sign might tell it all, but how do most Americans respond?
If it's an adult, there's a chance that you might just pass by.
But could you walk past a child and do nothing?
It seems unthinkable, but it happens every day in America.
We don't realize it because they're teens, and they don't look like children.
But they're just as vulnerable as any child.
Utica, New York, population 60,000.
Unemployment rate 5.8%.
The homeless youth count is up almost 40% from two years ago.
But despite all the rundown and abandoned buildings, recognizing who might be homeless
isn't easy.
We have folks just hiding in the cracks of our society all the time we walk by them.
We don't notice that they're homeless or we're homeless last year.
Most homelessness is short term.
People go in to homelessness and they come out of it, but that segment of our homeless
population, the chronically homeless, you know, cycle in and out a lot, and they tend
to stay in longer.
Steve Darman, a social science associate, has been tracking the homeless population
in central New York for years, and says the difference between homelessness in Oneida
County compared to other places is what's on the surface.
You'll see homeless people doing their daily routine.
We have a community standard here that we're pretty serious about.
We don't accept any street homelessness.
We just don't accept it.
But Darman does admit there is a homeless problem in New York, and many programs put
in place to help young men and women have failed.
We have one really large program for homeless youth where it's a 24 hour supervision.
They get free health care, GED classes, you know, if they haven't taken their GED.
And it's, you know, it's an expensive, well-staffed program, and they're looking at me like,
what program are you talking about, and it's the Oneida County Jail.
And this is true in almost every community.
For this community, there is one shelter, which has seen about 40 percent of the homeless
female youth population in Oneida County within the last year.
I wouldn't have known what would have happened to some of the girls if they didn't have
a place to go.
I know that they wouldn't complete school.
I know that maybe they'd still be on drugs.
I'm sure some of them would be probably in jail, abused even more so, because they're
very vulnerable with their self-esteem.
They believe what anybody tells them sometimes.
New Horizons, a shelter for girls between the ages of 16 and 21, provides support for young
women who no longer have a place to call home.
People have a misconception that homelessness is people living in cardboard boxes, underneath
cages, eating trash for their meals and begging and things like that.
And I do think in some large cities that does happen, but we don't see that here.
So to see that extreme of homelessness really does crush me, knowing that our girls, people
don't see them as homeless.
They just see them as punk kids that can't get along with their parents and are just
thrown out and end up here.
Some of these girls enter New Horizons with more problems than with just being homeless.
Drugs and alcohol can sometimes play a major part in the lives of the girls.
You develop a devious mind, and that's what drugs can do to you.
You think about ways to manipulate people.
You think about ways to manipulate the system or anyone just to get drugs or to get alcohol.
Now it takes more than a shelter and food to keep these young women off the streets
and motivated to break a cycle of drugs and abuse.
Takes a staff with a lot of patience and sometimes personal experience.
I pretty much have gone through it, and I'm not ashamed to share it with them.
Cynthia Slay doesn't hold back when it comes to her job.
You say, oh no, like put my foot down, oh no.
As a resident service coordinator for the shelter, she runs a tight shift.
I can't have build-up of different corners, and if I do, I will pull it out, and they
have to come back in here and they have to do it.
The chores, they are anal, sorry, my name's there, anal about chores, like you have to
do the chores.
You get put on restriction if you don't do the chores.
This is not acceptable, spider webs, and there's dust.
They gotta be perfect to her.
Cynthia, we call her the white glove.
She's like big on dust.
She could see a white grin of rice on a white carpet, that's how good she is.
You know, I say the bark is worse than the bite, that I'm a barker, and it's not that
bad, so she gave me the name Pitbull.
And like a Pitbull, Cynthia's personality comes out at times strong, confident, and agile.
But this wasn't the case for most of Cynthia's life.
Have a good weekend, girls.
This is the neighborhood where Cynthia grew up.
10-5 used to be right there.
Then started drinking alcohol.
There, and I came through there, and I broke my middle finger, still crooked till this
day.
I'm not gonna give it to you.
My family was well known in Utica.
They were Hellions, as you could say.
They used to have a lot of parties, and at an early age, let's say 10.
I'd help clean up after the parties, and I'd drink the drinks, so the alcoholism started
yelling in my life.
By age 13, Cynthia was into marijuana.
I remember when my mom first found out that I was smoking weed.
She smelled it on me, and I was about at the age of 15.
And she always would tell me, you know you graduate.
Before that day could come, Cynthia found out she was pregnant at age 16.
The baby was a stillborn.
I think that when I had a child at a young age, and I never mourned her death, I just
gave an excuse to myself that didn't work.
And it was, God knew I couldn't handle that baby at 16, so he took her.
But that's all.
That's what I would say year after year.
Cynthia believes this experience was a major factor in what was to come.
This time progressed.
I continued to drink the alcohol, and I continued to smoke the weed, and it did.
I went to cocaine.
She became addicted to drugs.
I had a deal with that.
Wouldn't give me no more, because I looked horrible.
Just refused to give me, and said, please, you need to stop, because I was walking dead.
After a few run-ins with the law, Cynthia spent 10 months in jail, and was then placed on
three years probation.
I would dress up every Thursday and act like I went to report to probation, but actually
I went in the bathroom at the courthouse and smoked crack.
But in 1999, Cynthia says she hit her lowest point.
I started working on the fourth step while I lived here, and I still have a fear today
of working on the fourth step, because twice before when I worked on the fourth step, I
relapsed.
The fourth step to narcotics anonymous is making a fearless moral inventory of oneself.
Cynthia was clean for three years before her last relapse.
This is the apartment building Cynthia used to live in before her last relapse.
I had to move my things to this girl's house in a buggy, and that was definitely my low
for me.
While on probation, Cynthia started working for New Horizons, but not as an employee.
I came here to do volunteer work, and it was community service.
I had to do 100 hours of community service from my active addiction days, that I was
going to the store taking their property.
In 2000, Cynthia started working part-time at the shelter.
I hire people that probably somebody wouldn't have hired, because I think people deserve
a chance.
I think they really do.
They've got some good qualities, and if someone doesn't give them a chance, who is?
You know, trials and tribulations, the ups and downs, I don't look back, though.
I look back at the negative part of it, and I keep it in my face like it's suggested in
the rooms.
You keep it up front, and it keeps me going a day at a time.
Today, Cynthia admits she's not perfect.
I'm an employee of the MOTC, and one of my things is I park illegally.
I'm going to move, only because I'm being recorded, I'm going to be honest about that.
But she is drug-free.
Life's good today.
I think for the girls, sometimes if they know a little bit about them, I go, jeez, if they
got through this, where am I?
I can do that, too.
I can accomplish something, too.
And that's the message shelters like New Horizons hopes to pass long to all homeless youth.
They saved my life, if you really think about it, they did save my life.
They're just truly awesome people to do a job like this.
Homelessness is just one of several big problems facing the United States and the world today.
For the past several decades, the world has looked to the U.S. to take the lead in finding
solutions to these types of problems, but that's changing.
China and India are closing the gap when it comes to scientific and technological advancement,
largely because America has seen a declining emphasis in science and math education.
In one recent study of 30 nations, American students ranked 17th in science and 24th in
math.
Sean Gentile shows us what educators in Central New York are doing to get today's students
back on track.
Byron Norellius is a biologist who works at the Museum of Science and Technology in downtown
Syracuse.
But today he's taking on the role of recruiter.
We're trying to prepare as many kids as we can to enter the Greater Syracuse Scholastic
Science Fair.
Here at a school in Liverpool, Norellius is trying to get students interested in science,
something that has proven difficult in recent years.
We've put together a graph, a really kind of sad graph actually of recent participation
in the last 10 years and it's just a complete negative trend.
Which is why this year, just one week before the science fair, Norellius is out of the
lab and in the classroom, motivating students to take part.
For why are young people losing interest in science in the first place?
It certainly has entertainment value.
What you're about to witness is not magic, it's purely science.
When this baby hits 88 miles per hour, they're going to see some serious...
A sample of Hollywood blockbusters from the past 20 years can tell you that.
According to Afzal Khan, the Science and Technology Coordinator for Syracuse City Schools, the
problem in American schools is the lack of any unified approach to science education.
In America, each state has its own standards, its own measures that they use.
Some states will teach social studies for one semester, or science for another, and
as the same teacher, or some states might not even have a dedicated teacher.
The Obama administration has made it a top priority to reform the education system and
require all schools to place more of an emphasis on math and science.
It's time to demand results from government at every level.
It's time to prepare every child, everywhere in America, to out-compete any worker, anywhere
in the world.
To accomplish that, the Department of Education is pushing for a more standardized curriculum,
one that stresses the importance of science and related fields.
The biggest movement right now is the STEM education, which is science, technology, engineering,
mathematics.
There's a STEM coalition with the government right now that is reauthorizing some bills
and all that.
As we approach STEM education towards understanding of what the future of our job should be and
how our students should learn, the idea here is to integrate all the science, technology,
engineering, and mathematics principles.
But in the meantime, educators agree that one of the best ways to get young people engaged
in science is through participation in science fairs.
Science fairs encourage total creative thinking, independent thought, and critical thinking
skills that really the student is developing on their own.
It really is driven by whatever the student's personal interest in science is.
When kids are engaged in active learning experiences, in addition to the book, the knowledge and
skills that they learn are enduring.
Project-based learning, learning that involves kids thinking through issues, developing some
power in autonomy over what they want to learn is something that we think really creates
opportunities where the kids are going to put what they're learning into action.
Nearly 200 students are demonstrating their knowledge at this science fair in Central
New York.
This is the 30th annual Syracuse Scholastic Science Fair.
The Museum of Science and Technology sponsors this event each year to give local students
the chance to explore their own interests in science outside the classroom.
Water purification.
Well, this is a turbidity sensor.
Students like Tyler Church, a junior in high school who prior to his meeting with Byron
Norellius, had no interest at all in taking part in the science fair.
He was really nice and persuasive, so I was like, all right, I'll go with it.
Byron and Tyler first met just one week before the science fair.
Before it actually gives you a reading for the NTUs, it's reading a voltage.
That brief interaction sparked Tyler's enthusiasm, and Byron hopes to do even more.
We're hoping to be able to provide even more resources for mentors and other professionals
that might be able to work with them to hone their science fair projects.
We're hoping to have them experience what real science is and where scientific results
come from.
But for educators, it's no easy task to convince students that trying hard in math and science
is important.
We kind of have a culture that sort of accepts low performance and quantitative disciplines.
It's known that there's a lot of mathophobia in America, and it's almost considered acceptable
not to do well in mathematics.
But teachers are trying to combat the pop-culture image of high-achieving students as geeks
with glasses and pocket protectors.
I need a win-plouse!
Being a scholar, having a 3.5, having a 3.8 isn't something that's corny, it's not
whack.
It is something that's cool, it does benefit you in the long term, and if you stay on that
path, you know, success is in there.
And that's the philosophy behind the Collegiate Science and Technology Entry Program, better
known as CSTEP.
The program encourages and prepares students for careers tailored towards science, technology,
engineering, and mathematics.
Here at the CSTEP conference, hundreds of academically ambitious students from all over
New York State attend workshops, present research projects, and meet with distinguished
professionals and prospective employers.
The kind of conference like the CSTEP conference that brings together students who are doing
research, largely in science and technology, is the kind of thing that this country should
be doing more to support.
CSTEP is a great motivation, and it's a huge aid for students to want to enjoy learning
science, enjoy being in fields of science, and it's ingrained in our heads that America
is lacking behind, and that we do need to help, so it makes you want to be a part of
that solution.
The culmination of the CSTEP conference is an awards ceremony, with trophies and medals
going to the top student presenters and speakers of the weekend.
Dr. Freeman Robowski, the president of the University of Maryland Baltimore County, believes
events like this one are a positive sign that America is headed in the right direction.
What we're seeing, I believe, is a new era in which young Americans, particularly, quite
frankly, have shown that they believe, yes, we can do what's necessary, and I think that
this new administration will use the best brain power we have in this country, will bring
the resources to bear on the issues, will bring in others from around the world, and
America will be stronger than ever.
And with all the problems facing the planet in the 21st century, America will need to
be.
The hope is that these future scientists, engineers, and doctors will be up to the challenge.
If any of those students decide to become doctors, they might one day get to use a revolutionary
medical technology called the Da Vinci.
We'll bring you more on that later on Timeline.
It can make you unable to move when you fall asleep or wake up.
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It can make you extremely sleepy during the middle of the day.
It is narcolepsy, and you don't have to face it alone.
For 22 years, the narcolepsy network has helped people with sleep disorders, and now they
can help you discover the facts, discover the help, discover narcolepsy network.
Welcome
back to Timeline.
This year, about 600,000 women undergo hysterectomies.
What used to be a six to eight week recovery time has been reduced by half, thanks to an
unorthodox new surgical system.
I found out about this technology that's helping doctors in Syracuse save lives.
You can find them in Hollywood movies, like Short Circuit, Robocop, and even the classic
cartoon, The Jetsons.
Robots seem to be everywhere.
Ask anyone on the street to give a pop culture reference to robots, and you might hear…
Terminator, Star Wars, R2-D2, Robocop, offhand all those transformer gigs, I guess.
Robots are not only a hit at the box office, they're making their way into people's
homes, vacuuming their floors, and cleaning their pools, which is a giant leap from the
first robot invented by Leonardo da Vinci more than five centuries ago.
And now there's a robot that can perform surgery?
Well, sort of.
In today's operating room, you might find doctors using a robotic surgical system called
the da Vinci.
The da Vinci is a set of instruments that allow us to have better control of laparoscopic
instrumentation.
So, it's an improvement on laparoscopic surgery.
Laparoscopic surgery is surgery that's done through very small incisions, where a camera
is inserted into the body cavity, in this case into the abdomen, and then other instruments
are inserted also through small incisions, and they're controlled from outside of the
body.
It's been called the da Vinci robot, but it's not actually a robot at all.
The biggest misconception, I think, is that people think it is a robot, because they call
it a da Vinci robot.
So that implies that the machine can somehow do things autonomously, which is not true.
The instrument is always under the direct control of the surgeon.
The surgeon sits about five feet away from the patient and controls the da Vinci through
a console with joysticks that look and work like video game controllers, and are designed
to prevent shaky hands during surgery.
The surgeon views a 3D image of the surgical site and controls four robotic arms with instruments
that simulate a surgeon's hand movements.
Well, the view that you get is as though you're looking directly into the abdomen, but with
magnification.
So, there actually are a lot of small structures and blood vessels that you can see very well
with the da Vinci console that you couldn't see if you were looking with the naked eye.
I wanted to film the da Vinci in action, so I contacted four hospitals and Syracuse that
have a da Vinci.
But none of the hospitals would allow our camera crew inside their operating rooms.
But I was able to find a da Vinci patient who told me about her experience with the da
Vinci.
It was a very good experience, the hospital was tremendous, the surgery was very easy.
After more than three years of uterine pain, so intense, she didn't want to leave her
own home, she finally decided that a hysterectomy was her best option.
Three and a half years of being extremely sick every day and just feeling like all I
wanted to do was crawl back into bed every day.
It was unbearable and we had tried everything, different medications, there was just no getting
out of doing the hysterectomy.
Doctors told Brogheisen if she went with da Vinci surgery, she would have less pain
and a shorter recovery time.
They said five incisions instead of one large incision, it was supposed to be two to four
weeks out of work instead of six to eight weeks and it was really, I was really kind
of excited about it.
Brogheisen was back to work within four weeks of surgery.
Even after when I came back to work, everyone's like you have so much color back and you
look so much healthier and you look like you feel better and I'm like, I do.
Once confined to her home because of the pain, Brogheisen is now living life again.
I'm doing more, I'm never home, I'm always out.
I have a two and a half year old goddaughter that before I just couldn't do anything with
her and now I'm running around with her and I absolutely love it.
I have not felt this good in four years and it's amazing how good you can feel.
Vicki Brogheisen had her da Vinci surgery here at Community General Hospital in Syracuse
with a local surgeon right there in the operating room.
So if a surgeon can do an operation from five feet away from the patient, would it then
be possible to perform an operation from an entirely different city or country?
Well this was actually the original idea for the da Vinci was for military use actually
and the idea was that you could have injured soldiers close to the battlefield with maybe
physicians assistants or some type of general surgical personnel who could put the instruments
inside the patient and then you could have your array of surgical specialists back at
your medical center hundreds or thousands of miles away and have them actually do the
operation.
Yeah, if you can put the console five feet away, you could put it 500 miles away.
The problem with that, and I don't think that that scenario is likely to become a reality
anytime soon, is that if you have any kind of problem with the patient, if the surgeon
is 500 miles away, they can't just step over and take care of it.
Now what can go wrong?
What if the machine breaks down?
What happens then?
Well it'd be quite unlikely that the machine would actually break down.
I don't know of any cases where that's actually happened.
There are instances where for technical reasons you can't complete the surgery laparoscopically
and in that case you always have the option and we always have all the instruments available
to actually make an incision and finish the surgery the traditional way.
A 2006 Food and Drug Administration report shows just that.
The da Vinci presented a fault code to the user, so the surgeon decided to convert the
plan procedure to non-robotic surgical techniques.
In 2002, a Florida man died two days after blood vessels were accidentally cut during
a surgery for kidney removal with the da Vinci.
Shortly after the death, St. Joseph's Hospital in Tampa, Florida called the incident a tragic
isolated event.
Intuitive Surgical, the company that makes the da Vinci, says the da Vinci system is
designed to be fail safe, so in the event of technical failure, the da Vinci is designed
to shut down safely.
Also, the da Vinci cannot be programmed, nor can it make decisions on its own.
The system requires that every surgical maneuver be performed with direct input from the surgeon.
Knowing the possibility for human error, I asked our doctor, do you think robots in the
traditional sense will ever be able to perform surgeries autonomously?
Not with what we have right now.
These are not instruments that are designed to do anything by themselves.
These are instruments that are totally human controlled.
Even if we had that capability, would patients like Vicki Brokaisen really trust their lives
to a robot?
Computer doing surgery, no, you would never see me doing that.
Never?
Never.
I think I would probably die before I would let a computer do my surgery by itself.
Since a machine is only as effective as its operator, even as technology advances, it
appears that robots will never be able to replace humans, at least not in the operating
room.
Each da Vinci surgical system costs about one and a half million dollars, and there are
more than one thousand da Vinci's installed in hospitals worldwide.
And you know, new technology is helping out in more places than the operating room.
That's right.
Green technology has changed the way many industries conduct business, especially car
makers.
Last year, when gas prices hit record highs, consumers were waiting in line to get behind
the wheel of new fuel efficient hybrid vehicles.
But with a slowed down economy, the price of fuel has plummeted, and so has demand for
green vehicles.
Ronald Gayate spoke with Central New Yorkers to find out if Americans really are green
or just greedy.
Green was the fashionable new black, at least when it comes to the automotive industry.
Hybrid vehicles introduced in the year 2000 are experiencing a 44 percent decrease in
sales as of March 2009.
In recent months, there have been surpluses on several lots across Syracuse.
We've had waiting periods as high as nine months at one point in time over the last
few years, and then it's trickled down to anywhere from four to eight weeks.
But the demand has slowed down a little bit, and then they've always revamped the supply,
and they've increased it over the last few years.
Despite jokes to the contrary, hybrid vehicles handle like a regular vehicle, not so much
like a toy or a gimmicky car, they feel and handle like a true vehicle.
Hybrid electric cars are not the only eco-friendly alternatives available.
A high school auto mechanics class in North Syracuse has been working on converting cars
to alternative, low emission fuels resulting in a novel vehicle.
We did some research on diesel, and the emissions from diesel is very dangerous, and there's
studies being shown that it's causing asthma for children, and it's just putting a lot
of sulfur oxide in the air, whereas the emissions from vegetable oil is zero.
We had this tested, and the only fumes coming out of there is just basically whatever was
cooked.
But it's a lot better than you've ever gotten behind a UPS truck or a school bus, or a tractor
trowler.
The diesel's just, you can't even breathe.
This just makes you hungry, doesn't make you sick.
Diesel was popular several years ago, and has long been an alternative fuel outside the
U.S., more for performance than environmental considerations, but it's making a comeback.
They're known for carbon.
My roughly get 40 to 45 miles per gallon of mine.
That's good for diesel, long as the price stays down.
That's the whole thing, because diesel does cost more than gas.
This is the cleanest diesel ever in the United States right now.
Gas stations now do have a pump or a car for diesel, as a technician to point of view.
It does cost a lot more to maintain a diesel vehicle when it goes out of warranty than
the gasoline engine.
The maintenance is a lot higher, I do spend more money.
It hits you.
It's a little expensive, now you come in, you spend over a thousand bucks.
Clean diesel advocates believe that there are other considerations when purchasing a
vehicle.
I think it's gas price driven.
It really is, but I don't think it's being thought fully through when they're buying
them, as far as the potential impact that they could have.
That's not thought through.
It's just too quick to jump on what the hottest thing is at that point.
Case in point, spoiler utility vehicles.
Everybody jumped on the spoiler utility vehicle when gas was a dollar a gallon, and that's
what drove up gas prices, but oil consumption wasn't really thought of much of anything,
but people didn't care.
They just drove what they thought was good for them, what was cool for them, and then
as gas prices rose, there was a huge backlash against the spoiler utility vehicles.
There are other issues with green tech vehicles.
Safety considerations have led to first responders relearning some of their tactics and training.
One you see what the battery is, it's very well encased, but if it was to have enough
impingement from being struck by another car and was leaking, we have a hazmat crew over
a different station that would come and they could isolate any problems.
This is a 600 volt DC powered, will give you a zap you need to be concerned about, and
that's what makes an electric gas engine be a little bit more different than say a diesel
or a vegetable oil car.
There's different flammable ranges and there's things that you need to be concerned of, but
you're still a fireman, you've got to mitigate the bomb.
There's also an unspoken side of green tech Americans should consider.
We're not great planners.
We react to crises is what we do.
It's really low gas prices now or a product of a slow economy.
This is a short term phenomenon, what's going to be our long term standard.
Pocket books first, environment tends to be kind of a second issue here.
Kind of the shorter term solution is to build more fuel efficient cars, and the hybrids are
very well tested, reliable model here that will get 40 to 50 miles a gallon now and can
only improve upon that.
So fostering genuine technological change has been American fundamental and I think it
should remain as such.
Performance and energy efficiency are criteria Americans consider when looking at new green
vehicles.
Today, for the foreseeable future, most of us will be driving cars that are fueled by
putting a fuel in it, whether that fuel is oil or alcohol or liquefied petroleum gas
or whatever it is, you're going to charge a tank with a fuel to allow you the freedom
of going distances.
It's not enough to look at whether it's clean or not.
Many many other aspects, economic, social, ethical and so forth, that you need to be
considered.
Yeah, I can go collect all the fat from McDonald's and from Burger King and it's a good thing
because I would have wasted this.
But I cannot go build an energy policy based on this as a large source of energy.
Anything that's waste, if you use it, that's a good thing.
So alternative is not always to switch from gasoline to something else, hybrid cars still
use gas, but you can get 50 miles to the gallon instead of 25 miles to the gallon.
That's a much more effective way of reducing emissions and environmental impact.
When it comes down to it, consumers have the ultimate say so.
The last vehicle I owned was a small car and being in the military, you know, you always
have a lot of gear to move around and people and it just really wasn't very fitting.
So I wanted to upgrade to something, but I wanted to lose gas mileage, so I got a SUV
that was a hybrid.
A lot of it was, you know, it's economic, well, I guess there's a little bit of environmental
aspect into it, but I'm not the kind of man who's going to chain myself to a tree to stop
it from being cut down.
Our gas mileage, besides that, it's their expense of the maintain, and if they go down,
it's pretty much like all the other, it's not coming back.
In the end, whatever decision consumers make, green will be a factor either for the wallet
or for the earth.
One group of central New Yorkers who might welcome a little global warming is the local
college baseball team.
We'll explain when we come back on time.
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Welcome back to Timeline.
In a town where the orange and blue of Syracuse University dominates college athletics, the
city's only Division 1 baseball team wears green and gold.
Chris Decker introduces us to an unlikely source of professional baseball talent, the
dolphins of Lemoine College.
The college baseball season is half done, but the only ones taking the field on this
typical April day in Syracuse are a few geese.
Bad weather is a fact of life for baseball players in the northeast, but while the geese
take the mound on the soggy Lemoine College ball field, dolphins tow the rubber in the
gym.
The weather is often an obstacle for the dolphins.
It's never a deterrent.
We play our first month of our games without ever practicing outside.
You just do the best you can, and you can't change it.
I'd like to change some things, but I can't change the weather.
Lemoine College is in the difficult position of competing against not only their baseball
opponents, but the environment as well.
The dolphins begin practicing in January, but the snow forces the team indoors.
We're in a tough area with just the fact that you can't really get outside until, you
know, I mean, not even now, it's middle of April as we can get outside.
The first regular season game is in late February, but the team doesn't play its first home
game until mid-April.
That's 29 consecutive games on the road to begin the season.
The team only plays 52 games all year, and only 19 of them will be played at home.
That's two road games for every home game, and the dolphins play their strongest opponents
Tulane, Boston College, and top ranked Georgia on the road.
It's a schedule that imposes a unique mindset on the team.
We played good teams on the road early, so we're going to get beat, and we hope to be
competitive and get better and win, you know, win enough to stay motivated, and then really
try to kick it in, you know, this time of the year for the last 28-30 games really become
a very good team.
All right, here we go.
Let's go, boss.
Get your feet ready and get moving.
It may seem odd practicing baseball on a basketball court, but these practices pay off.
Coach Owens has posted a winning record in all nine of his seasons at the helm of the
Dolphins.
He's had 12 of his players drafted by a Major League Ball Club since 2000, and at least
one player was picked in each of the last eight years.
That's one of our program goals is to develop pro players, because everybody that's good
in baseball wants to chance to play pro baseball.
It may, you know, I think everybody in every sport wants that, but in baseball here, that's
a realistic expectation for at least one or two of every kid that we bring in every recruiting
class.
That track record for professional success has made it easier for the Dolphins to recruit
young players like 2008 all-American outfielder, Chris Edmondson.
He told me from the first day that he talked to me that I had a chance to move on and get
drafted and out of here.
I know that there's been so many people drafted.
We get a lot of exposure from scouts.
They know that, you know, our kids will develop, and it's easy to recruit a player over a school
X that, you know, never gets a player drafted.
School has a good reputation academically.
Coach Owens has a great winning percentage.
I mean, I've heard great things from scouts in the area saying, like, kids always come
out of Lamoine as much better baseball players.
Stay on the bag where you can.
Come on.
Be coming off.
Be tagging.
Coach Owens' success continues the tradition of this relatively unknown school's pipeline
of baseball talent to the pros.
Since 1976, 32 Lamoine Dolphins have been called to the Diamond by a Major League baseball
team.
Tom Browning was drafted in 1982 and finished his 12-year career with 123 wins at the Major
League level.
Jim Deshaies, also a 1982 draftee, reached the majors for good in 1986.
He went on to win 85 games before retiring in 1995.
Pete Hoy is the current Dolphins pitching coach.
He was the first Dolphin to pitch in the Olympics, in his cup of coffee with the Red Sox in 1992,
adds weight to his words during bullpen sessions.
I'm really focused on getting the ball down.
You know, having someone who's kind of been there as a college pitcher and then worked
his way through the minor leagues, hopefully I have a little bit of an idea of what it
takes to have to prepare a guy to go on to be a professional and be a successful professional.
Yeah, he's an unbelievable pitching coach.
I mean, he's taught me so much about the actual game of pitching.
I mean, everyone comes in here just trying to throw as hard as they can, but he's made
me realize it's not about that.
It's about where you throw your pitches, how you throw your pitches, and he's just having
a much better understanding of the game.
Steve Owens also had a brief stint playing professional baseball.
He was a Cubs minor leaguer for two years.
When the ball player profession didn't pan out, he pursued a new career in coaching.
The new career got off to an early start.
Owens was named the head coach of Division III, Cortland State, when he was just 24.
And I had some players that were almost as old as I was, yeah, so that was a little interesting
the first year.
Put your butt down, your hands out.
After eight years at Cortland State, Steve Owens took over the Lemoine College program
in 2000 and began a reputation for putting ball players on a path to the pros.
He does it the old-fashioned way, stressing sound fundamentals.
You stretch in, you hear, and your foot hits as you catch the ball.
Fundamentals.
Get your feet going, right through to the target.
And more fundamentals.
Set your feet, here, boom, boom, yeah, he's pretty old school.
So old school that in an age where metal alloy bats dominate amateur baseball, Steve Owens
hits grounders with a wood bat.
I mean, he's tough.
He's all over us all the time.
He has to be, I mean, to do the right things, to play baseball the right way.
We're behind our guys, but we also push them very, very hard.
They always want us to strive for the best, both on the field and off the field.
When I recruit them, I tell them, listen, I want you to be very, very good.
If you don't want me to push you, then don't come here.
He pushes me to be a better player, so I like the way he coaches.
The old school attitude toward playing the game has proven very effective at directing
his players toward success, a success that draws 18-year-old kids to play ball from the
Boyd College.
You know, when I was a young guy, I always wanted to go to a huge school with a ton of
kids, but, you know, the college is actually smaller than my high school, and, you know,
it's kind of nice going somewhere where you get to know everyone, and, you know, baseball
wise has been great.
I've had an awesome time here.
So we've tried to maintain getting the best players in our home turf, and then we expand
wherever, you know, wherever the wind blows.
The Dolphins are practicing on their home field outdoors for the first time this season,
the day before their first home game.
The practice is a short one.
The hitters get a few swings in, and the fielders acclimate themselves to the grounds.
And the Dolphins take the field for the first home game.
They're at least familiar with the place they call home.
It's been a tough year for Lemoine Baseball.
The team is off to a typically slow start, and the club has battled more than just opponents
and weather.
They've also dealt with injuries from the routine strains and pulls of a long season
to more serious events.
Unfortunately, second baseman Chris Murphy only suffered a concussion on the play.
The right fielder, freshman Brett Botsford, actually moved in from the outfield to replace
him.
A position switch he's used to.
Well, I came in here as a second baseman, but our right fielder went down with an injury,
so they moved me out to right field.
And now that we have no second baseman, I had to play second baseman.
The staff at Lemoine College has a reputation for both developing young players like Brett
and winning ball games.
I think they're equally important.
I don't think I put emphasis more on one than the other, although if you ask my players,
I think they would tell you that that winning is pretty important to me.
When it isn't, I don't want to coach anymore.
Unfortunately, Lemoine College did not win their home opener against Cornell.
Down a run in the bottom of the ninth, the Dolphins followed up a leadoff single with
a ground ball double play and a sharp two hopper to the second baseman to end the game.
It's a disappointing start to the home schedule, but history indicates that the team will rebound
for a strong second half.
Another dolphin will hear his name called during the June amateur baseball draft, and
Lemoine College will begin next season once again, prepared to overcome the odds and maintain
a winning tradition in the cold climate of central New York.
And we certainly wish the Dolphins the best of luck for the rest of this season.
From the baseball field, we take you to the underground.
The underground world of break dancers.
They call themselves B-boys, and in our final story, we take an inside look at the culture
of break dancing.
B-boy to me is basically a person that just likes to express himself in a way of dance.
For B-boys, it's all about the battle.
You know, when you're in battle mode, it's serious, you know, so you've got to take
it serious.
Break dancing pretty much hit the mainstream, then it just returned to its origin, which
was underground.
A lot of people think that breaking stopped in the 80s, and now you see it now, it's
a re-emerge, but the truth is, it's always been, it's always just been an underground
culture.
Balloon has been since the birth of B-boying.
As far back as cardboard on the streets and a boombox, you know, ballon has always been
the essential key in the core of the growth of break dancing.
A battle is where two people get together and just have it out.
It's nonstop, but it's on a dance floor.
No physical confrontation, can't touch nobody, but it's like, you go as hard as possible
to beat that other person, but you try to pull off the best tricks, pull off the best
sets you possibly can throughout the whole battle.
It's structured like a sport.
The whole jam is structured like a sport, you would say.
You have the bracket, the judges, and the athletes.
This one person goes out, starts, displays, does his set, and then you're going to have
to go out and answer to it.
You have to attack the person, not necessarily attack them, but attack them with your dance.
So you have to know how to defeat what he just did.
Basically I watch and see what they do.
And if they do a windmill, I try and do a windmill and a freeze.
If they do a headspin, I try and do a flare to something a little harder or something
a little bit more technical, you know, so that I have one up on them.
The battle, I think, would definitely have to be the most important thing you could do.
When people throw jams, that's the only way to get out.
That's the only way you get more people into the whole scene.
Without battling, you wouldn't have B-boys at all.
There would be no such thing as B-boys.
Central New York, the battles are important because the more battles, the more breakers,
the more, you know, the more it expands.
Upstate, the scene isn't that big up here.
And it's kind of, before we put the scene here, upstate, and then you go to New York
City, scenes up here.
We recently went down to New York City for a battle, and we realized we weren't up to
par with the competition, and we had to step our game up.
New York City was a crazy jam.
That was the first big jam I actually went to.
So when we went down there, it was just kind of like, I open for us about what we needed
to do to make our entire crew as one better.
I mean, after that, it just showed us what real B-boys looked like.
We thought we were the s*** before we went down to New York City.
We thought we were really worried.
We were like, oh yeah, we've seen videos on YouTube.
These kids aren't that good.
Let me go down there, if you walk in, and everyone is mad, mad, dope, you're like, wow, you feel
like we're crazy.
And then afterwards, we watched the whole jam, and we're in the car back like, nah, we're
not where we need to be.
We're here, and they're up here.
So from there, we practiced every day for two weeks straight to go take two.
It was crazy the way we practiced.
It was like straight boot camp.
And we had to do a hardcore practice.
We had to take two lottery this week, so, well, Friday, so we really like practicing
to get stuff down.
We're just really looking forward to this battle, because since the NYU battle, we got
this new style, that Upstate's very basic, where when we went down to the city, a life-changing
experience, and it just showed us that basic isn't the way to go.
If you can mix it up, do the same thing, and make it look different, that's the essence.
That's the next level.
So, we're going to show them something, make our debut.
You guys ready?
All right, all right, let's do this.
We won all of First Battles, and then some of us won all our quarterfinals, and some
of us got it, made it into the semi-finals, and Dave made it into the finals.
That's right, just like James Brown, double time in the beat, son.
At take two, it was one of the first times that I had seen a lot of the Eshi kids in
a long time myself.
Every last one of them had elevated to a point where I was like, wow, you know.
Let's go.
Let's just keep going.
I'm hype.
Let's just go.
They were down in the parking lot, had it going, had the cars up, lights on.
I mean, little stuff like that don't happen all the time.
It was a good day for us, so it was kind of like our celebration of what we worked so
hard for, and we finally got the respect that we deserve.
So it spilled out into the parking lot, and just having fun, man, and just throwing down
some beats, and that's the culture and its essence.
That's the truth of that's real b-boying right there, where it's not about judges.
It's not about how much money you could win or whatever.
It's about just enjoying yourself, and just really, really expressing yourself and having
fun.
And that brings our show to a close.
We hope you've enjoyed it.
On behalf of all of us here at Timeline, thanks for watching.
We'll see you in the next one.
